Spire of Sorcery (Limited Early Access) News

Last week, we worked on version 189 and shipped it on Friday night – too late to record a feature review or post a Steam update. Sorry about that! Things happen. In today's update, we cover both version 189 and version 190 (released today).

[h2]CONCEPT[/h2]

Following up on the features that we introduced in the last week's version (sustenance reserve, hunger and starvation; and cooked food items), we bring in a number of awesome things: food resources, cooking pot, ten recipes for cooked food and – finally! – a whole bunch of fully functional personal traits. Let's jump into the details –>


[h2]SUSTENANCE POINTS, PARTY PANEL & COOKED FOOD[/h2]

As a recap from the last week, the party now has a sustenance level that is replenished by consuming cooked food. The current state is displayed in the travel mode, with a detailed tooltip:



At the start of each day, every party member consumes 2 sustenance points (by default – traits and diseases may affect this). When the reserve goes below zero, the party enters the hunger zone (-5 to mood of every character, every day), and when the reserve gets below 50, the party begins to starve (-10 to mood of every character, every day).

To replenish sustenance points, the party needs to consume cooked food, which can be done via party profile:



There are 3 cooked food items which cannot be produced, but can only be found as a part of the event loot:

• Hardtack (horrible taste, but good sustenance);
  
• Soldier's ration (the taste is pretty crappy, but not as bad as that of the hardtack);
  
• Traveller's ration (the taste is neither good nor bad; it's the best that one can have, of the long-lasting food items)
  

[h2]FOOD RESOURCES[/h2]

A new feature that we shipped today: food resources.

They are like natural resources –

• seeded across the maps
  
• re-spawned according to their own rules
  
• collected simply by stepping on them
  

Food resources are used in cooking, and result in cooked food.

Currently, we have 4 different food resources, related to biomes:

• Wetlands: slugs and locust buds
  
• Forest: gifts of nature and gnawed carcasses
  

As you can see, a party of mages is not really great at hunting or fishing. As any library-dwelling folk, they can barely pick up what's left by others 😜.



[h2]CHANGES IN HOW CONCOCTING WORKS[/h2]

Before we get to cooking, let's first talk about the changes we've done with concocting:

• now you need to appoint an alchemist to concoct anything
  
• every action of concocting costs 4 fatigue to the alchemist (default, traits may change this)
  
• every action of concocting results in 1 substance, but some traits may change this to 2
  
• depending on the personal traits, concocting may improve or worsen the alchemist's mood
  

[h2]INTRODUCING: COOKING![/h2]

Finally, finally, finally: the cooking is in the game!

To cook, you need 2 ingredients, both of which must be food resources. But unlike concocting, they can be the same thing.

• there's currently 10 recipes for cooking food in the game
  
• generally, taste depends on ingredients
  
• generally, using ingredients from different biomes results in cooked food that has higher sustenance
• than the food cooked from ingredients belonging to the same biome
  

[h2]PERSONAL TRAITS[/h2]

This is by far the most important feature that we ship today: now, different characters respond differently to the same situations –>

• some are spooked by ghosts
  
• some are curious about the dead
  
• some enjoy cooking, and get a mood boost from it
  
• some hate concocting, or earn extra fatigue when engaged in it
  
• some won't mind retreating from any encounter
  
• some take pleasure in the destruction of their opponent
  
• some hate to see others die
  
• etc etc etc
  

Back in 2020, we agreed that making different characters respond differently to the same situation was at the heart of the game – and finally it's here!



[h2]WHAT'S NEXT?[/h2]

With a bit over a month left until Steam Next Fest, we've got 2 big issues to chase: the encounter flow – making it faster, but also logging everything in the chronicle – and the campaign screen, which places the specific map (e.g. Prologue) in the context of the whole campaign. We're going to start working on those next week.

Have a great weekend!

Last week, very late on Friday, we shipped the update to version 187 – but had no time to post the proper release notes; this announcement covers both what changed then, and what changes with today's update to version 188.

And today's update brings some big changes: the mood mechanics is in, including all the mood traits; all resources and substances items received their "tastiness" values, which affects the mood of those who consuming them; Memory is now reflected with precise number of rings on the hands of the caster, spellcasting got its first animated effect, and there's a number of new sound effects.

Last but not least, nearly every alchemic substance had its effects revised, and the game received 4 new types of tokens as well as the first alchemic items that produce results immediately when used during encounters. Have fun exploring the new version!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]MOOD MECHANIC IS IN![/h2]

The mood mechanic is in, replacing earlier constructs of "euphoria" and "stress" that we classified as "lasting effects".

How does the mood work?

• every character has their current mood, which is static
  
• certain events (retreat or consumption of substances) changes the mood
  
• the neutral mood is between -15 and 15, while the overall limits are set at -100 and 100
  
• each character has their own unique set of mood traits, positive and negative, which kick in in different mood states
  
• The current mood of each party member is reflected on their portraits, top-left corners –
  

With the tooltips reflecting the name of the current state of mood, and the resulting mood trait –



The description of how the specific mood trait works in all the different states of mood is shown as a tooltip in the character's profile –



While the range of each mood state is displayed as a tooltip over that state's icon, including the mood trait effect that kicks in:



This mechanics is a big thing for us, because it opens up a whole range of connections with cooked food (coming), personal traits (coming) and relationships (also coming!).


[h2]EVERY ITEM THAT CAN BE CONSUMED, RECEIVED A TASTINESS VALUE[/h2]

You might remember that characters complain about certain items having a good or a bad taste – and this is also reflected in the corresponding sound effects. Well, we gave the taste a mechanic of its own now!

You will see the values next to the values of toxicity of each item:



How does it work: whenever a character consumes something with the value of N, their mood changes by N. So drinking a bottle of Throatburner (tastiness: 15) will give you +15 on the mood scale, while eating a giggler egg (tastiness: -5) will result in -5 on the mood scale.


[h2]STRESS AND EUPHORIA AS LASTING EFFECTS ARE NOW REPLACED WITH MOOD CHANGES[/h2]

In all the cases where we used "stress" and "euphoria" as lasting effects (such as retreat, victory over a stronger opponent or conversion of fear tokens at the end of the encounter), we now use changes in character's mood. Here, for example, you can see that forced retreat now results in -5 to the mood of everyone who retreats –




[h2]CHARACTER'S MEMORY IS NOW REFLECTED IN THEIR HAND RINGS[/h2]

For a while now, we wanted to add this cool little feature: now, character's memory stat (which determines the spells that are accessible) is additionally reflected in the hand rings that the character wears. Here, you can see that one character has memory 4, matched by 4 rings, while another has 6 and therefore wears 2 extra rings.




[h2]ANIMATED SPELLCASTING[/h2]

Finally, we found some time to add a bit of "wow" to the process of spellcasting: now there's a ball of magic leaving the hands of the spellcaster, as the casting begins –



And a bolt of magic that hits the target before the tokens are dealt –




[h2]UPDATED SELECTION OF HEX[/h2]

We're getting ready to update the window that shows what's in a hex (you can call it up with right-mouse button), and the first step was getting rid of the annoying yellow sci-fi selection style :). Now, when you select a hex to look up its info, it's highlighted in blue, with a bit of animation around it –




[h2]NEW TOKENS AND CHANGES IN ALCHEMIC SUBSTANCES[/h2]

We're overhauled the whole range of alchemic substances. The main changes are as follows:

• there are no longer any substances that have different effects in encounter (e.g. starting a fire) and in travel mode (e.g. giving immunity from fire); we did not like the complications in user interface and discovery that resulted from this approach.
  
• we removed "immunity" as an effect, because it was connected to a timer (10 days, 15 days, etc.) and managing time in this sense – "I should attack spitters while I'm immune to their tokens" – wasn't really fun.
  
• in general, we removed the timer-based effects from all substances (such as "euphoria for X days").
  there is now a new group of substances that provide protection during encounter, by issuing specific tokens – and there are new tokens: protection from frost, protection from fire, protection from fear and protection from blindness. We find this to be a better solution than timer-based immunity.
  
• we changed the effects of items which created short-lasting environmental effects, and now allow certain alchemic substances to have the immediate effect; for example, when you use "Captive spitters", it will no longe create an environmental effect, but rather it now immediately deals damage to the opponents.
  

Some of these changes still require an update to the user interface, which we'll look at in version 189.


[h2]WHAT'S NEXT?[/h2]

Personal traits and cooking are up next, while we continue to fine-tune the interface. And then we're on to building a real campaign – with the map of the world, and a sequence of chapters. But first, some rest and sleep over the weekend =D.

Have fun, peoples!

Dear community:

We shipped version 186 last week, on Friday, but it was already too late to post the release notes here. And over the weekend we spotted a few bugs in the new features, thus instead of posting the notes for version 186, we've spent the whole of Monday working on the hotfix – and deployed it late last night (again missing the timeframe to post the update here!).

Such is the reality of the dev style that we practice since December: having committed to weekly builds, we only have 5 days in total for each of the updates.

• One of these days is spent on communication – synchronising with others what each of us should personally focus on.
  
• Another day is spent reviewing concepts and iterating designs, which doesn't produce shippable results but is crucial in helping us think all the new features and content through before placing it into the game.
  
• The third day is consumed by the releasing itself: assembling candidate versions, testing, then going back to do more changes and assemble another candidate version.
  

This leaves "just" 2 days of more or less quiet time when we can hammer away on things. And the truth is that we all like shipping stuff to let the players play with updated mechanics, so every second week we push the limits of when we should stop adding and begin testing – such as what happened with versions 186 and 184. Anyways, here's what we managed to ship with the most recent update:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]CONCEPT[/h3]

This week we improved the flow of encounters, added new encounter visuals and introduced new user interface solutions that make the game better looking as well as easier to understand. We also updated design of injuries and a number of events, and deployed one new feature: environmental conditions, which are a more refined tool that replaces the mechanic of biome effects. Finally, we updated the music track that's playing in the main menu, which scratches the itch that we had for a while by now.

[h3]THE MAIN MUSIC THEME IS UPDATED[/h3]

As some of you may know, music and sound effects of Spire of Sorcery are created by A.Fruit, a musician with whom we collaborate since 2015. This week, Anna updated the main music theme of the game that plays in the main menu. We hope that you enjoy this new, deeper version that now rings truer to what Spire of Sorcery delivers in its campaigns.



[h3]TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT CHARACTER EFFECTS[/h3]

Earlier, we classified all character effects according to thematic groups: diseases, injuries and lasting effects. As the mechanics evolved, we realised that this is not the most optimal classification, and decided to now group all effects by their temporal nature. You will see new tabs in Character Profile that reflect this.



The same change is also reflected with the icons underneath character portraits in encounters and in the travel mode. From left to right under each portrait, the icons correspond to temporary effects, permanent effects and equipment.



[h3]UPDATED RECIPE BOOK AND ALCHEMIC CAULDRON[/h3]

This is not the end of the updates for Recipe book and Alchemic cauldron, but we're getting there. What is deployed with this week's build: a more coherent way of concocting (you can only concoct based on recipes), and filtering based on selected substance (if you know the recipe, it will become selected) and on selected resources (the recipe book will then only display the relevant recipes).



[h3]UPDATED SPELLCASTING USER INTERFACE[/h3]

Spellcasting part of the UI now has a new button for casting spells, that changes as the spell becomes available. We also improved animation and colouring of the "astral hands".



[h3]UPDATED SPELLBOOK[/h3]

Finally, finally! We upgraded the Spellbook that's used during encounters. We hope that you like the new look.



Coming with one of the next updates: the ability to filter spells by element used, that's what the extra space on the right margin of the book is reserved for.



[h3]ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS ARE NOW CLEARLY ATTRIBUTED[/h3]

When environmental effect kicks in, we now properly display it, and then attribute its actions.



[h3]BIOME EFFECTS ARE OUT, ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS ARE IN[/h3]

The biggest change of this version is the removal of biome effects and the introduction of environmental conditions.



Earlier, biome effects were structured like this –

Forest

• using Fire tokens here a risk of triggering "Burning ground" environment effect
  
• when "Missed!" happens in this biome, there is a chance to kick in "Falling debris" effect
  

We did not like the randomness of this mechanic, as sometimes 6 Fire would result in nothing, and sometimes even the first Fire would initiate the "Burning ground" effect. We also didn't like the fact that you have to look up each biome's tooltip individually, to understand what is happening where.

Now such conditions are separated their own category, and can be related not only to biomes, but also to objects and specific events:

Forest

• EC Ignition (4 Fire) – once 4 Fire tokens are issued in the encounter, "Burning ground" begins
  
• EC Debris (9 Damage) – once 9 Damage tokens are issued in the encounter, "Falling debris" begins
  
• EC Brittle environment – once "Missed" mechanic happens, "Falling debris" begins and lasts for 2 rounds
  

We will keep balancing and fine-tuning these environmental conditions with updates to versions 187-190, and what you'll find in version 186 is just the start of the journey. But we feel that this change is important as it gives both more control to players, and more variety to events – as well as making the user interface more transparent.

[h3]WHAT'S NEXT?[/h3]

In the time that remains of this week, we'll do our best to further improve the encounter flow and the alchemic cauldron screen. Meanwhile, one of us is already working hard on introducing mood and mood traits into the game with version 187.

Have a great rest of the week, people!

This week we've been busy with further improvements of how we display token mechanics during encounters. We also rolled in a completely new concept of how we show spell formulas that features hands of mages that move in the astral space! Additionally, we have a new music track for Prologue, and a number of interface additions that prepare the game for a few new big features – mood states and personal traits.

If you already own the game under Limited Early Access, we hope that you love the progress! =) And everyone else will soon be able to try Spire of Sorcery's playable demo that will be a part of Steam's Next Fest in June.

Detailed release notes for version 185: on the game's forum, as well as below.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]CONCEPT[/h3]

This week we continued doing our "house cleaning" and "homework", which stands for "improving UX for existing content and features" and "preparing the game for new features to come". When people think about the best parts of making games, it comes down to "new" things: new mechanics, new content, new experiences that click together. But a larger part of games development is actually seeing things through – making sure the buttons are where they should be, the tooltips reflect the actual rules of the game, and nothing of what happens on the inside is confusing or invisible to the player. Which is where we're at, this week and this month in general.

[h3]STEAM NEXT FEST[/h3]

Before we dive into what's new in version 185, we wanted to share with you a bit of good news: we decided to showcase the payable demo of Spire of Sorcery during the upcoming Steam Next Fest, which starts in about 10 weeks. We see it as a unique opportunity to let everyone who's interested in the game, but is currently not a part of the Limited Early Access community, to try the game first-hand. Aside from this being a hard deadline for us to finish a number of key features, it's also a convenient deadline for our dev team to finalise the translation of the game into the 7 key languages that we plan to launch in.



[h3]UPDATES ON CHARACTER MULLIGAN SCREEN[/h3]

Character Mulligan screen, which is currently a part of starting every new game – but will in the future move to its own place in the campaign structure – got updated:

• in addition to seeing character's strongest and weakest stats, you will now see one of the personal traits that they possess
  
• every character got their own inventory, which you can fully preview when choosing party members
  
• we also preview the resulting collective inventory of the chosen initial party
  

[h3]WHEN EQUIPMENT ISSUES TOKENS, THIS IS NOW REFLECTED WITH ANIMATIONS[/h3]

When characters have active equipment, such equipment issues tokens at the start of the encounter. Earlier, we were unable to connect for players such tokens and their origin. Now, we display the specific equipment and the token that is issued, as well as name the activated mechanics (in this case, "Added") – see below:



[h3]UPDATED CREATURE MUGSHOTS[/h3]

When creatures attack your party, the attacker first indicates the indented target and the token that it's about to deal. Earlier, we used a downscaled version of the whole creature to identify the attacker. Now all creatures have their own specific mugshots, like on the screenshot below.



Another place where mugshots got an update is on the list of extra creatures waiting to join the encounter on the left panel:



[h3]WHEN ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECT DEALS TOKENS, IT IS NOW SHOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN[/h3]

Earlier, we would increase the size of the effect's icon, but this was not enough to draw player's attention there. Now, whenever an environmental effect begins to act, we first introduce it by displaying its large icon in the middle of the screen.



[h3]CONCENTRATION GOT ITS OWN ICON[/h3]

Concentration is a mechanic that allows characters to perform more than one action per turn, during encounters. Because we already have diseases (and soon will have injuries and mood traits) that affect the cost of concentration, it was about time that the mechanic received its own icon. Here's how it looks in Character Profile (the tooltip is not implemented yet):



And here's how it looks in the encounter mode, on the button to the left of the elements on hand:



[h3]WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD MOOD TO THE GAME[/h3]

With one of the upcoming versions, the game will receive the Mood mechanic that will replace Euphoria and Stress lasting effects. There are 7 mood states, and each character receives (randomly) 2 mood traits that define how different mood effects them personally.

While the feature is not hooked up in the game logic yet, we already added it to the user interface. You can see the mood scale shown below the portrait of each character, in their character profiles.



[h3]WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD TRAITS TO THE GAME[/h3]

Similarly to mood, personal traits are one of the bigger features that we "ship by parts". With this week's update, we bring them into user interface and with one of the upcoming builds we'll also enable the effects. You can currently find the list of personal traits on character profile. The list will expand as we expand the pool.





[h3]WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD PERSONAL PASSION TO THE GAME[/h3]

"Passions" is a new mechanic that is related to character's dream: it is something that improves the mood of a particular character, such as "casting combo spells" or "casting really long spells". While we cannot turn this mechanic on before we implement the mood, we already found a place for it in the character profile.



[h3]ANIMATED SPELLCASTING AREA[/h3]

This change has been a while in the making, and we debated whether we should introduce it in this week's build – or wait until a more refined version. In the end, we decided to show what we currently have, as we like keeping the dev process transparent. In a nutshell: spellcasting area now shows 'hands' of the mages, which reflect the progress of spellcasting (idle, in process, completed). This will continue evolving as we'll fine-tune the animation as well as add a pretty cool solution we thought of, in terms of reflecting the memory stat.





[h3]NEW MUSIC FOR TRAVEL MODE, CHAPTER: PROLOGUE[/h3]

We finally got around to creating the custom music track for the current chapter, Prologue. You will now hear it playing in the travel mode. It's meant to reflect the mood of the chapter.



[h3]WHAT'S NEXT?[/h3]

In general, we still have quite a lot of homework and house cleaning to wrap up: getting better at displaying encounter outcomes, improving animation of environmental effects, and so on. At the same time, we're going to move forward with a few new features: mood, mood traits and personal traits, so that we can finally get around to implementing hunger, foraging and cooking. It's hard to say what exactly we will ship next Friday as time flies so fast! We wish you all a very nice spring weekend, and look forward to your feedback on the recent version.

We released version 184 on Steam on Friday, but it happened so late that we simply didn't have the time and the energy to finish writing these release notes until now ;-). This week, we're already knee-deep in work on version 185, which bring similar improvements to the encounter flow.

Detailed release notes for version 184: on the game's forum, as well as below.


CONCEPT

This week we continued to work on the way that we display the encounter mechanics. The user interface of the game is catching up with the game's logic as we learn to show to players everything that happens. There is still a way to go, but we've already managed to upgrade the way that the token combinations. On top of this, we made a few improvements in the overall user interface, and worked hard on larger issues that will ship with the forthcoming updates – such as mood and personal traits. And, as usual, the game received another batch of new sound effects, and another batch of translated texts (Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Korean).




MOVE POINT INDICATOR IN TRAVEL MODE

This has been on our todo list for a while. Now there is a move point indicator in the travel mode, which shows how many move points are left in the current day. Why do we need it? Because in the future, player party may have more or less than the current standard of 3 points per day. Thus we need to get the interface ready to inform you about the changes.




COMBINATIONS OF TOKENS NOW HAVE UNIQUE ANIMATIONS

This is the main feature of this week's update: now, when tokens combine, they have relevant animations (for example, Damage clashing with Protection in) and the description of the result (the result of this combination would be "Absorbed!"). This makes the encounter much easier to understand, and will allow us to shorten some of the timers since things became more obvious with this change.




INVENTORY COUNTER FOR ENCOUNTER USE

A quality of life improvement: there's now an indicator next to the inventory button in encounters, which shows how many items you have already used in the current round (by default, you can use only 1 item in 1 round).




LOOT ICON GOT UPGRADED, NOW HAS A COUNTER

Another quality of life improvement: we changed the loot icon (earlier, we just re-used a sack from the 2019 version) and added a counter next to it, so that you can see how many items have dropped there at any given time.




"VICTORY OVER A STRONGER OPPONENT" ICON UPGRADED

And yet another small improvement: we updated the icon that indicates, whether or not your party is eligible to the reward for victory against a stronger opponent, to match the overall style of the user interface.




"MORALE BOOST" INDICATOR UPGRADED

Finally, the indicator used to show the progress of the Morale Boost mechanics (cast 3 spells in 3 rounds or less) got a facelift. It also flips over once the 3 rounds have passed or the boost has been deployed.




WHAT'S NEXT?

With version 185, we will continue working on the visualisation of encounter mechanics as well as prepare the ground for a few new features: the mood (you'll see Character Sheet change to accommodate the mood scale initially, and the mechanic itself is scheduled for versions 186-187) as well as the transition from biome effects to encounter conditions (currently: Forest has a condition that applying Fire there runs a chance of triggering Burning ground; in the future: Forest will have an encounter condition "Flammable environment", and that condition starts Burning ground when enough Fire accumulates) and the groundwork for game log and the notification system.

We have to restrain ourselves from adding new content right now, as we want to first of all ship all the tasks that are already open. Nothing is as fun as creating new creatures! But we must be cook cooks, and clean the kitchen table before starting on the next recipe =).

Stay well, and see you in a few days!